


the forfeit of the peace

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Everybody Dies, Execution, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Present Tense, Suicide, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5975536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I have decided: whoever once again violates the peace will die.”</i>
</p><p>The Prince of Verona keeps his word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the forfeit of the peace

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to try writing a) a young Escalus, who's about the same age as Romeo, Mercutio, et al., and b) a darker take on Escalus for a while. So here's a young Escalus who's in way over his head and who makes choices he believes are the only ones available.
> 
> Possibly sadder than canon.

Escalus considers mercy, in the too-brief moment between understanding the terrible scene in the square and decision, but he's known since he saw his cousin's broken body cradled in Romeo’s arms, the Capulet Tybalt face-down with his blood spilling red across the dusty stone of the square, that there can be no mercy.

Mercy is weakness, here in Verona. He knows that now, as surely as he knows what a terrible mistake he had made once in thinking that he could be friends with his future subjects. He'd been careful, always so careful, to ride to hunt with Capulet, drink with Montague, dice with the Monaldi and play at cards with the Filippeschi. But in the end a prince had to stand alone, without even his own blood as equal. If only he had stayed apart from the first, if he had not thought he could spend the few years of his too-short youth drinking and wenching with Mercutio and his friends and then simply become their liege lord. As if they could respect him after he'd been their friend.

Mercutio’s sightless, glassy eyes stare at him in accusation as his light, contemptuous voice says in memory, an echo of an old argument, _“You really are Escalus now. I never thought **you'd** grow so sour-faced so young, coz.”_

 _I failed you,_ he thinks, _I failed all of you,_ and hardens his voice, thanking God that at least he does not sound so young, that he was blessed with a deep, resonant voice that can cut through the clamor of a crowd with authority. “Silence!” he shouts, “Stop talking! You all heard my edict: whoever once again violates the peace will die. I am your prince and my word is law. You will not question it.”

It is the only way to make them obey, these quarreling blood-soaked partisans who have been permitted for far too long to make the law in Verona. And if what it takes is Death’s harvest falling heavy on their youth, if it takes the waste of a generation of young men, they have brought it upon themselves.

He brushes aside Montague’s widow, who falls to her knees, clutching at his cloak. He does not watch as his guards follow his signal, arresting those too stunned or slow to flee in the ensuing chaos. It will take time to hunt down the rest, of course, to find witnesses who saw the fight. But he must be thorough and impartial if he is to be fair. The chief instigators are already dead, but all who fought must die, every distant cousin and half-acknowledged by-blow, every retainer fool enough to take his master's cause as his own.

“Please,” Romeo chokes out, and Escalus looks before he can stop himself. Romeo was still sitting bent over Mercutio’s body, clutching him—it—to his chest. “Let me stay with him a little longer.”

Escalus hesitates a moment, remembering a boy kneeling to another boy too young for the weight of a princely mantle, and an oath given with mild sincerity, a sharp contrast to Mercutio’s too-silky eloquence. It is almost the worst of it, that gentle Romeo, who had always kept himself out of the fighting, should be the cause of so much death. The betrayal feels oddly personal, and yet—Romeo weeps for Mercutio, openly and without shame, where Escalus cannot. Will not.

“Let him go to the crypt with my kinsman,” he tells the guards, “but keep close watch on him.”

* * *

It is nearly a week before the brawlers are all rounded up, save perhaps a few who managed to flee the city's walls. They will live as outlaws, or die. Escalus will not concern himself with them.

Romeo, of course, is marked for death, as is Benvolio. Escalus makes it a point to learn the names of the others, Montague and Capulet, their servants and friends, a few foolish bystanders who'd simply joined in: Valentio and Lucio Capulet, slain Tybalt's cousins; Peter, Angelo, and Gregorio, Capulet servants; Abramo, Montague man-at-arms. Marco, a butcher's boy. So many names. So many lives.

He counts them and instructs the hangman to procure the correct number of nooses. The man is unprepared for such custom. This, too, takes time.

They have been strangely silent, the Montagues and Capulets. Can they be broken to yoke so soon or have they at last found common ground in hating him? Will he wake to find the palace stormed, a sword at his throat? Montague’s widow would hold it, he thinks, and her arm would not waver.

The night before the executions, he does not sleep.

* * *

“Tell Julia I love her,” Romeo says, looking at Capulet’s wife, who stands still as a lightning-riven tree. Her face does not change. Beside her, Capulet starts in something that might be horror, looks at his wife with something that might be betrayal. “Please!” Romeo’s voice breaks, and his soft, boyish cheeks are stained with tears. “Tell her! Tell her to live! I never meant—” 

The trap-door drops, and there is a sickening crack. His body hangs limp and lifeless, and Escalus forces himself to look at it, although the sight turns his stomach. _I failed you,_ he thinks, _but you also failed me._

The crowd is silent, with none of the usual merriment that accompanies the death of criminals. They are frightened, Escalus realizes, frightened of him. And he will be glad of it, if that fear means he never has to order anything like this again. He nods to the hangman to bring the next man forward.

* * *

The next morning the Capulets’ washing-woman finds a body in their courtyard: a young woman barely out of girlhood, her white nightdress muddied and soaked through with rain, her neck bent at an unnatural angle. The washing-woman’s screams wake the household, what is left of it, from uneasy dreams.

They had taken her eating-knife, of course, the scissors from her sewing basket, everything even slightly sharp from her room, even the sheets from her bed. One of her few living cousins had cut down the vine that grew up the side of the house beside her balcony. 

But the balcony itself—perhaps in desperate grief, old and rusted locks might be forced open, shutters thrown wide. The balcony was high. It took only a moment.

**Author's Note:**

> A few not very exciting notes on the lines that inspired this + where I pulled names from, just in case anyone's interested.
>
>> 1\. Relevant musical lines: 
>> 
>> Escalus during "Verona": _Döntöttem: aki még egyszer megsérti a békét halálfia!_ = "I have decided: whoever once again violates the peace will die!" (The last part is literally something like "will be Death's son," which seems to translate colloquially to something like "a goner," but that didn't fit the tone of this story.)
>> 
>> Benvolio before "Lehetsz király", apparently of the Prince: _Csak tudnám, mitől lesz minden uralkodó előbb vagy utóbb savanyú és unalmas!_ = "If only I knew what sooner or later makes every monarch sour and boring!" While I think the Prince is meant to be older, that line might be read as there once being a time when Benvolio and his friends _didn't_ think he was sour and boring, and one of the current Escalus actors is pretty young.
>> 
>> 2\. Monaldi and Filippeschi are mentioned in Danté's _Purgatorio_ as another set of families about to erupt into feud: _Come, you careless man, come and see Montecchi and Cappelletti, Monaldi and Filippeschi, the former already in open strife and the latter about to start one._ I'm not sure they're necessarily in Verona, but I liked that better than choosing completely random names.
>> 
>> 3\. Valentio is mentioned in Shakespeare as one of Tybalt's cousins, and Lucio could be read as a Capulet as well. Peter is of course the Nurse's servant, and Shakespeare has Gregory (Gregorio) as another Capulet servant. I've settled on "Angelo" for Tybalt's tiny manservant. Abraham (Abramo) is a Montague servant in Shakespeare.
> 
> I did decide to handwave all the executed brawlers as men, primarily because this is set in a vague 16th century, so I interpreted the presence of women fighting as metaphorical rather than literal, but also because of the language of Escalus's initial threat.


End file.
